Gabriel’s words took a while to reach the language-processing center of my brain. But when they did, the impact hit me hard, and my knees grew weak.

  This journey had been so hectic that I hadn’t really had time to sit down and think about it. About the true consequences of the world being virtual. So I had just instinctively assumed that I, like Ayumi did, existed outside it.

  But I was wrong.

  Oh, so wrong.

  A sense of dread I had never felt before in my life took over my entire body, and I began shaking uncontrollably. A claustrophobic fear that wrapped around me, cutting off my senses and numbing me to my core.

  “W-wait a second. How can that be? There’s no way our technology is up to the point…”

  My half-baked question answered itself.

  “Oh, I see.” A self-deprecating smile found its way onto my face. “This isn’t like the real world. It’s just a lousy simulation. So the tech from the outside world can be much more advanced than ours. Heck, if those are the rules we’re playing with, you might all be actual aliens and this world is nothing like the real one. You might even be superintelligent compared to us. Are we really just happy little pets wagging our tails at your whim?”

  Ayumi, to my surprise, decided to stop my nihilistic rambling herself.

  “Damn it. You just had to say it, didn’t you?” She said, directing her sharp words at the archangels. “Now that it has come to this… let me clarify something, Takkun. I’m definitely human, as you understand one to be. And despite what some people might say, so are you all.”

  Hearing her calm words, the suffocating blanket of panic began to dissipate.

  “Human-level AI, like all of you, have passed the Turing test and every other test conceived so far to determine if you are human or not. Some of those tests don’t even exist in this world. It’s said that the technology used emulates the human brain in a computer perfectly. So rest assured of this at least. You are human.”

  Emulate a human brain in a computer? How is that even possible?

  As far as I knew, that wasn’t possible in this reality. Computers were smarter than us, but only smarter in very specific tasks, like playing chess. In other words, some human capabilities, like emotion, were still exclusively ours. That also extended to the fuzzy concept of consciousness.

  But if what Ayumi said was true—I had no reason to doubt her at this point—then I was proof that such futuristic technology has already been achieved in some other timeline.

  But emulating a human brain in a computer? No matter what, that can’t be easy, even with incredibly advanced tech.

  It was then that the true scale of this simulated world hit me.

  There are eight-odd billion people in this world. Billion. That’s an eight followed by nine zeros, and that’s on top of everything else—all the cities, all the oceans, all the animals… How many tera… no, millions of petabytes of storage is that? How much CPU power do you even need to run something of that magnitude? How much physical space would a system that enormous occupy in the real world?

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  It was mind-blowing. Truly absurd. Even the largest, most expansive open-world games paled in comparison. Heck, comparing them was a fool’s errand. I couldn’t fathom how this world could even be possible, especially with such a high degree of fidelity. Either there were some massive compromises somewhere, or technology had advanced so far that I couldn’t even comprehend it.

  My mind was so out there trying to make sense of all of this that I almost didn’t register that Raphael had uttered something under his breath.

  “Imagine calling NPCs ‘humans’. You truly have lost it, Ayumi. Making friends and even falling in love with them. You’ve been living in this fantasy world for so long that you’ve actually started to believe it’s real. I’ll never understand why Divers pay so much for the privilege, personally.”

  “Now you understand why you are all worthless,” Michael added. “Virtual humans are a dime a dozen out there. One or two or a million, it doesn’t matter. Only fools like that girl even care about them in the first place!” His words sounded like something only a comic book villain could say, and they terrified me. “Now, Ayumi, if you truly do care about these things like you say you do, you should respect what this NPC here is saying. Stop this futile resistance.”

  Ayumi balled her fists, but she didn’t reply to his taunt. He clearly was just trying to buy time. She wanted to act as soon as possible; however, she also didn’t want to force Shiina to step aside and make her live against her own will. Especially now that the ultimate truth came to life.

  We were at a standstill.

  I glanced at Hikari, but it seemed like she was preoccupied with her own demons.

  So it came down to me. I had to do something.

  For Shiina. No, for the entire world’s sake.

  And, ultimately, my own.

  Shiina couldn’t be convinced with logic. It didn’t matter to her how much the archangels had lied or if the entire world’s existence was at stake. Without the support structure of her religion, she didn’t have a single reason to keep on living.

  So I had to give her one.

  “You aren’t worthless,” I said, and everyone’s gaze focused on me. “You aren’t worthless, Shiina. It doesn’t matter if you lost your powers, or your faith, or if the world itself isn’t even real. That crap doesn’t matter one bit.

  “Because, at the end of it all, you still have you. I barely know you, but I can tell. You love romance novels. You seem scary and off-putting at first, but you’re actually awkward and sensitive. Despite being dealt a bad hand by fate, you still did your best to perform your duties. You are your own unique and amazing person.

  “So from now on, live for yourself. Focus on what makes you special. Together with Hikari, Ayumi, and I. There will be a place for you in the new world Ayumi wants to create. I’m sure of it.”

  I had no idea if my words managed to reach her. This was the longest of long shots. I barely even knew the woman at all, so to say something so bold was a total shot in the dark. But it was the best I could do.

  Shiina stared at me with her ruby-red eyes, as if trying to determine if I was being genuine or not.

  I couldn’t tell what was going through her mind. Probably a lot more than I could ever hope to understand.

  And yet, somehow, my feelings managed to reach her.

  “Okay,” she said softly, her cheeks as red as her eyes. “I’ll try.”

  “W-What?!” Michael uttered as Shiina stepped aside, letting Ayumi through.

  Without missing her chance, Ayumi moved. The archangels didn’t even have time to react. She merely touched them in quick succession.

  And finally, our enemies, real and imaginary, were gone.